I Asked Recruiters What They Actually Read. It Wasn't My Work Samples.

Last spring, a recruiter friend of mine admitted something over coffee that stuck with me: "I spend more time on someone's About page than their portfolio. The portfolio tells me they can do the work. The About page tells me if I want them in a room with my client."

That comment sent me down a rabbit hole. I reached out to a dozen recruiters, talent partners, and hiring managers across tech, agencies, and in-house teams — mostly folks based in Chicago, Austin, and NYC — and asked them to walk me through how they actually evaluate a candidate's online presence. Not how they say they do it. How they really do it.

The pattern that emerged surprised me.

The 90-Second Rule Is Real, But It's Not Where You Think

There's a well-worn statistic floating around that recruiters spend six seconds scanning a résumé. In 2025, the equivalent moment happens on your digital presence — but the attention isn't distributed evenly.

Nearly every recruiter I spoke with described a similar sequence: LinkedIn first, personal site second, and only then a deeper portfolio dive — and only if the second step went well. The personal site isn't the destination. It's the gatekeeper.

And within that gatekeeper moment, the About page does the heavy lifting. One talent partner at a Boston-based agency told me she gives a candidate's site "about 90 seconds total," and roughly half of that goes to the About page alone. Project pages get skimmed. The About page gets read.

Why? Because portfolios answer a question the recruiter has already assumed yes to. If you made it past the LinkedIn screen, they believe you have skills. What they're still deciding is whether you're a fit — whether you communicate clearly, whether you have perspective, whether you seem like someone their client would grab lunch with.

The About page answers that. Or fails to.

What Actually Converts

When I asked what separates a strong About page from a forgettable one, the answers clustered around a few things:

A point of view, stated early. Nobody wanted to read a chronological career recap. They wanted a thesis — a sentence or two about what the person believes about their craft. One hiring manager put it bluntly: "If your About page could belong to anyone in your field, it belongs to no one."

Plain language. Jargon was the most-cited instant turnoff. Recruiters described mentally translating phrases like "results-driven synergist" and simply giving up. The candidates who wrote like they talked scored consistently better.

A photo of an actual human. Small thing, but nearly universal. Not a headshot from 2016 — just a recent, decent picture. It sounds superficial, but it signals that the site is alive and maintained.

Evidence of momentum. Not a full work history — a short list of what they're doing now. Recruiters read stale About pages the way they read stale LinkedIn profiles: as a sign the person has checked out.

Three Sites That Worked

I asked a few interviewees to share (anonymized) examples of personal sites that genuinely moved candidates forward. Three stood out.

The designer who led with an opinion. Her About page opened with a single line: "I think most software is over-designed, and I've spent my career proving it." Every recruiter I showed it to remembered it a day later. She had three interviews scheduled within two weeks.

The engineer who wrote for humans. His About page explained his work the way he'd explain it to a neighbor — no acronyms, no stack names in the first paragraph. A technical recruiter told me this was rarer than it should be: "Most engineers write their About page for other engineers. But I'm the first reader, and I'm not one."

The marketer who showed the receipts. Instead of adjectives, her page listed three specific outcomes with numbers attached, then linked to a short writeup of each. It took her maybe an afternoon to build. It got her more inbound interest than years of cold applications.

Notice what's missing: fancy animations, custom domains with clever wordplay, interactive portfolios. The sites that worked were mostly simple. They just sounded like a person.

The Takeaway

If there's one thing to steal from all this, it's a reordering of priorities. We tend to pour effort into the showcase — the work samples, the case studies, the shiny project pages — and treat the About page as a formality. The recruiters I spoke with do the opposite. The work gets them to yes or no on capability. Your About page decides yes or no on you.

Ninety seconds isn't much. But it's enough for a real person with a real point of view to come through. That's the whole job.

So here's my challenge, and honestly, my own homework too: open your About page tonight and ask one question — could anyone else have written this? If the answer is yes, you've found your weekend project.